The skinny on the big bull;
Oct. 5, 2006
By Rich Landers
Outdoors editor
The Spokesman-Review
News travels fast by the Internet and e-mail. So do rumors and lies.
The latest hunting-related fib to come across my computer screen is a
photo of two hunters with a monster
elk accompanied by this message:
"This
Elk was killed with a bow in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness. He
green scored 575 .... He has an unbelievable outside spread of 79
inches. This is the biggest bull ever taken with any weapon."
The reference to the Selway is the first clue that at least some of the
information is bogus.
"That was a big red flag to us," said Brad Compton, Idaho Fish and Game
Department big-game manager who also had received the digital image.
"That would be 150 points bigger than any bull that's ever come out of
the Selway. It's too farfetched."
"Anybody who knows anything about Selway
elk could take one look at
that
bull and know that information is wrong," said Ryan Hatfield of the
Boone and Crockett Club in Missoula. Hatfield, who just finished
researching and publishing a book about trophy
elk taken in Idaho, said
he'd received at least 150 e-mails regarding the so-called Selway
elk
in
the past few days.
After some sleuthing on Tuesday and a tip from a game rancher in
Riggins, I found the source of the photo and the bull: Laurentian
Wildlife Estate, which has operated as a shooter-bull ranch for six
years near Mont Tremblant, Quebec, Canada.
In a telephone interview, Laurentian manager Tony Barber (at left in
the
photo) said his California client killed the bull earlier this year
inside the 1,000-acre estate, which is enclosed by a game-proof fence
to
hold the domestically produced
elk and red deer.
The
elk is a Manitoba strain, not the Rocky Mountain subspecies native
to Idaho, Barber said while offering the following details.
The bull was 10 years old and weighed 595 pounds. Its non-typical
antlers had 12 points on one side, 9 on the other with an outside
spread
of 79 inches.
The bull has been monitored closely as it matured. "We picked up its
shed antlers last year and they measured 516 (Boone and Crockett
points)," Barber said.
Here are other numbers to ponder:
Barber said the bull's Boone and Crockett score is at least 560 green,
that is, before the drying and shrinkage required for official scoring.
(Two unofficial measurers scored it 566 and 561 green, he said.)
For comparison, the Boone and Crockett
world record bull, found
floating
dead in Upper Arrow Lake, British Columbia, scored 465 2/8.
The biggest fair-chase bull to be taken by a hunter came from Arizona.
It scored 450 6/8.
Cost to hunt
elk on the Quebec shooter-bull operation starts at $4,900,
but prices for trophy bulls are negotiated, as Barber put it, "into the
high five-digits."
If the unofficial measurements hold up, the bull's dry-score antlers
"would be the biggest ever taken by a hunter," Barber said.
Most sportsmen, however, take exception to his reference to "hunter."
Indeed, sportsmen who hunt the old-fashioned way for
elk that run wild
and free won't have to compete in the official North American
record
books against this farm-raised specimen.
"Boone and Crockett does not keep hunting records of animals that come
from behind escape-proof fencing," Hatfield said.
You can contact Rich Landers by voice mail at 459-5577, extension 5508,
or e-mail to
[email protected].